Clay Paky Sharpys and Alpha Beam 1500s Light Up the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “I’m With You World Tour”

It's been a long hot summer just about everywhere, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are amping up the heat with their "I'm With You World Tour," which features Clay Paky Sharpys and Alpha Beam 1500 luminaires.

The rock band's tour began last fall and extends into 2013. In support of their tenth studio album, "I'm With You," the tour is playing dates across North America this summer with shows in stadiums and arenas.

Lighting designer Scott Holthaus of Happy Machine specified 96 Sharpys in a full octagon grid for the band's indoor shows, 78 for the stadium shows plus a compliment of Alpha Beam 1500s for the outdoor performances. The lights were supplied by Premiere Global Productions.

Holthaus says he uses the Sharpys "to fill the arenas with chopsticks of light - it's a really cool effect. I don't use smoke in the stadiums and the trick for working outdoors is to get any beams from the lights. With the Sharpys I can also cover the audience at great distances where most lights fail. For their size and weight, the Sharpy's power and output is amazing. They're the coolest light of the decade, and everyone knows that."

He opted to add Alpha Beam 1500s to his stadium inventory when travel restrictions called for a limited number of fixtures and easy transport by plane. "I had to have a great tracking beam," he says. " I had used the Clay Paky 300s for a TV show and had such success with them that moving to the 1500s was a no brainer," he reports. "I needed the coolest and most powerful lights I could find."

Holthaus has been so pleased with the performance of the Alpha Beam 1500s that he eventually wants "to replace more of my lights with them. They're very fast at pan and tilt. They're a great telephone pole of light - like a giant Sharpy! They've also held up in bad weather - it's been raining a lot, almost every day, and we haven't had any failures."

The lighting designer is becoming such a fan of Clay Paky lighting fixtures, in fact, that he's planning to use more for future projects. "I could gladly do an all-Clay Paky show in a second," he declares. "I'm easily their biggest fan!"

A.C.T Lighting is the distributor for Clay Paky in North America.

Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky Area Manager for North and Latin America, adds, "Scott used our Sharpys on last year's tour and I remember how pleased he was with them then. I'm glad to see he's filled out his inventory and look forward to working with him in the future."